There’s nothing new about this sort of thing. Thomas Frank’s brilliant book The Conquest of Cool documents how Madison Avenue, noting that the 1960s counterculture was only getting stronger, decided that it’d rather switch than fight—and started jamming copy about “joining the revolution” and “sticking it to the man” into every campaign they could, no matter how square.

What is surprising is just how out-there the content here really is. And I use the word “content,” here intentionally, because, lo, these videos transcend mere advertising. Together, they compose a “system” of “ground-breaking personal meditation, mindfulness, and affirmation based on the incredible power of KFC’s signature pot pie,” through which “comfort and enlightenment can be yours today.”

And all the appropriate—or appropriated—signifiers are present: we see the Colonel meditating and doing tai chi, we see finger cymbals and mandalas, and the chakra system retooled to relate specifically to pot-pie consumption. We hear the narrator’s soothing voice (which recalls for me a logy Alan Watts) say, more than once, “Namaste.”

Sometimes, he gets things right, though this is likely by accident. “The chicken that accompanies those vegetables,” he waxes about the pot pie’s ingredients, “is the result of a million-year journey toward your mouth.” This statement recalls the Zen meal chant that reminds us, “72 labors brought us this food; we should know how it comes to us.” But do we really want to know how this food comes to us? Probably not.

In one video, the narrator counsels us that, after unwrapping our sporks, we should “take the extra plastic and throw it as far away from you as possible. Mother Earth will recycle it as future sporks.” (Did I mention that KFC isn’t exactly beloved for its environmental responsibility, either?) You can taste the stupidity. But then, the video turns into a lesson on duality and non-duality. Really. Kind of.

And such hints of smartness, or the appearance of smartness, coupled with the absurd visuals and voiceover, make for an awful lot of fun—on the surface, at least.

Adweek wrote in their coverage of these ads: “Remember when Don Draper had his epiphany at the meditation retreat? … The appropriation of meditation techniques for consumerist ends is very Draper-esque—Don’s spiritual awakening in Mad Men, of course, being little more than his discovering a new way into a better advertising pitch.”

Oh yeah, I remember that well. It played like a moment from The Conquest of Cool come to life—just replace the revolution in the streets that corporations had been co-opting with the revolution of the mind on offer by Eastern Religion. As a Buddhist media-watcher, I was rapt. And maybe a little too willing to give ol’ Don a pass.